After serving in the military or police, do retired K-9 dogs get pensions?
and, can you adopt a retired police dog?
Yes.
It is possible for some police dogs to end up in private homes but I don’t know if the general public can just adopt them. My younger brother was the head of the K9 unit at a very large public university and one of his police Rottweilers was too aggressive (and frankly stupid) to complete all of the training. My brother adopted him as a pet/guard dog instead until he had a baby in the house and had to give him to my mother and stepfather who have him now.
Used to be, if the handler didnt want to adopt him, the dog was just put down. Things are better. But pensions are rare.
Some are too aggressive to be trusted as pets, and are just destroyed.
On a related issue, retired police horses in New York are sent to a farm operated by Wallkill Correctional Facility.
Yes, they actually are sent to a farm upstate where they get to run around in fields all day with other horses.
Most of the K-9 Officers I know immediately adopt their dog when it gets too old to perform. I guess an attachment forms after working with the same animal for years.
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If I was a police horse, and somebody told me they were sending me to Wallkill, I’d be pretty freaked out.
All of them? Around here a lot of horses wash out after a couple of years – the crowds get to them. It’s only a small force, but because of early retirement the number of retired animals is out of proportion to the number in active service
I doubt it’s all of them - as you note, there wouldn’t be room. I don’t know what the procedure was for selecting horses.
BTW, I wouldn’t recommend that anyone that doesn’t live in an adults only household ever own a former police dog. I say that as someone that grew up with a lot of German Shepherds, Malamutes, Dobermans and even a Chow. I have never been afraid of any dog until I met my brother’s former K9 companion. I know that he is unusual because he is a Rottweiler that is so big, strong and dumb and he is a sweetheart most of the time.
The problem is when he reverts back to his training that he never mastered. He hopped straight on my lap once while I was just sitting on the couch but he is way too big to be a lapdog so his extremely strong hindquarters forced my head into the back of the couch and cut off my breathing. I panicked like anyone would in that situation and he reverted straight back to his training trying to attack my legs and take me down. Luckily, my mother who has good control over him heard the whole thing and came running in time to pull him off before I got hurt.
I have never had that happen with any dog before or since. There is a very good reason why my brother had to give him a new home when he had his first child. Oddly enough, Solomon is extremely good with the cats and treats them as his own but he is fully prepared to take down any perceived criminal activity that crosses his small brain. He is like having the dumbest bodybuilder that wants to get promoted to head bouncer live in your house.
Most police dogs, especially the German Shepherds and Dobermans, are extremely smart but they are selected and trained for certain types of controlled aggression as their core job. Those qualities aren’t the same as your standard Lab or Golden Retriever. You can’t just take a former K9 and turn it into a gentle family pet.